


Visiting

by abyss1826



Series: Related oneshots [3]
Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Bat Family, Emotional Baggage, Family Drama, Fluff and Angst, Minor Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-05 14:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16812991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyss1826/pseuds/abyss1826
Summary: When Alfred's name showed on the caller ID Dick's mind went a million places at once. Someone was hurt. Bruce or Jason: injured, gassed, kidnapped, killed; something he needed to be informed about.“Alfred?” He barely managed to swallow down the panic, keep it from showing in his voice.





	1. When Dad's Not Home

**Author's Note:**

> ;3c

When Alfred's name showed on the caller ID Dick's mind went a million places at once. Someone was hurt. Bruce or Jason: injured, gassed, kidnapped, killed; something he needed to be informed about.

“Alfred?” He barely managed to swallow down the panic, keep it from showing in his voice.

“Master Dick! I'm pleased to have caught you so early in the morning.” His voice was without any dire urgency, as Dick had feared. He glanced at the clock. It was 7:30. He smiled. The man sure knew he wasn't an early riser. “I called to inform you that Master Bruce will be away for the next few days on a business trip. I thought you may take advantage of it and make a trip of your own, to catch up a little.”

“Oh,” he replied, surprised. Kori rolled over in bed to spoon him.

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice adorably slurred with sleep. He turned away from the speaker, mind racing to find a word to describe his relationship with Alfred without letting the man know he was in bed with someone or going into detail about what his role in the manor really was.

“Uh… granddad.” Both of them frowned.

“Dick? Are you still there?” 

“Yeah, yeah just thinking.” He sat up. Kori groaned at the sudden exposure to colder air and quickly stole all the blankets, tucking herself into a protective heap. Dick suppressed a chuckle. “What about Jason?”

“He can keep a secret as well as I can.” Dick heard a muffled 'Sup loser!’ in the background followed by a low sigh from the older gentleman. “You may take the time to meet with Lucius Fox as well, if you so desire. He did not tell me much but between him, young master Jason and the… current state of your uniform,” there was a heavy pause, “I thought you may like to see him.”

_ Without Bruce hanging around _

The implication hung between them, caught in the web that tangled family and vigilante drama in the horrid years long knot they were dealing with now.

“I'll think about it.”

“ _ This _ is where you grew up?” Gar asked, peering out the window up at the stone building leering at them through the trees.

“I  _ grew up _ in a one room trailer. I just ended up here afterwards.” 

“Must have been hell of a transition,” Kori muttered.

“Yeah.” Dick pressed a button when they pulled up to the gate. “Hey, it's me.”

“I must agree with that statement,” a man chuckled from the other side of the speaker. The gate swung open, clearly mechanised despite its apparent age.

He and Alfred had talked at length about bringing the others. Dick had thought it best that he go alone, since only Rachel had made the connection between Bruce and Batman. Alfred asked if he trusted them. Dick thought about it.

He did trust them, deep down, but knowing the bat's identity wasn't only an issue of trust, but also of safety. They could be targeted. Pried for information. Not to mention, what would Bruce do if he found out Dick had told? And he  _ would _ find out. It would be impossible for him not to.

“How will you be a team if they feel you don't trust them? You cannot separate your upbringing here between vigilante and not. If they are going to understand you, they will need to know.”

And they  _ were _ a team. He couldn't deny it any longer. He felt stupid for being afraid of working with someone again, with people, and he still was, but despite his efforts that was what they had become. Even when he had left he had been figuring things out for them. Trying to help.

They needed to know he wanted to be committed. Kori was right. Alfred was right. They need to  _ know _ him. Going to the Manor had to be the first step.

He sat still in his seat for a moment when they rolled up in front of the building before exiting as if jarred again by the sound of Kori closing the door behind her.

“You should call your mom, tell her we got here safely,” he told Rachel, handing her his phone. The number for the burner he had worked up before they left was already on the screen.

Angela hadn't felt like leaving the safehouse was a good idea for her, and Dick understood her paranoia. Eventually he had to make Rachel stop trying to convince her to come with. She had been cross with him the first hour or so of the drive, but the regular check-ins seemed to appease her enough. She just hated having to leave her alone.

Alfred greeted them at the door the moment Kori got to the landing. If he questioned the attire of the striking woman at all at first glance, it didn't show. He was far too polite for that.

“So you're Dick's grandfather?” She asked after shaking his hand. Dick blanched. “I didn't know he had living relatives.”

“I don't.” She glanced back at him.

“I became Bruce Wayne's legal guardian after the murder of his parents, just as he did to Dick, so the statement is not wholly inaccurate,” Alfred said, letting the four of them in. The kids all but gaped at the entryway. Ornate, but dark, like most of the architecture they had driven past. It didn't feel like a home a child would grow up in to Rachel.

_ ‘I grew up in a one room trailer _ ’ he had said. The statement had seemed harsh. Now, inside the Manor seemed harsher.

She had seen his home a couple of times, when her powers leached into the others’ dreams. Sometimes it would be before the accident, brightly knit blankets made by his mother, the spice of homemade tea, the three of them all piled into one bed because the pullout was broken beyond even uncle Clayton’s repair. 

Other times it was empty. Dark. Cold. The circus grounds were barren. His family's trailer left behind. Just like he had been.

When this happened she'd go to her mom, not that she had anywhere to go. They shared a room, a bed, Angela was always right there. It was still hard to call her mom. It felt… wrong, sometimes, associating the meaning with a new face. Knowing her mom had been her aunt the entire time. Angela would laugh her shaky laugh and tell her that she did look more like Melissa than her. They both took after Rachel's grandfather more than she did herself.

She still couldn't help but expect Melissa's tired face whenever her mom woke her up from a nightmare.

Rachel was interrupted from her thoughts by a loud thump behind her. Dick, who had taken up the rear, suddenly had a boy pinned to the floor. She looked up. He must have jumped over the bannister from the second floor.

“Bro, bro ease up man, jeez, just came to say hi.”

“Amature move, kid.”

“Apparently.” Dick got up and kept walking. “I'm Jason by the way.” Kori and Rachel shared a look, remembering back to that night on the roof. This was the Son.

“This is not the part of the Manor for those kinds of antics, Master Jason.”

“Sorry.” He wasn't.

“There's a part of the house for antics?” Gar asked.

“The Cave,” Dick replied. It confused the boy more than it answered his question.

“So what is your role in all of this?” Kori asked Alfred, quirking an eyebrow.

“I was hired by the Wayne family as a butler and housekeeper.”

“Now he also gets to function as the sole adult with common sense,” Dick added.

“What about you?” Rachel giggled.

“Do I act like a man with common sense?” He smiled. She couldn't argue with that.

“Are you saying Bruce doesn't have common sense?” asked Jason, sounding offended.

“Bruce dresses as a bat and hurts people instead of functioning like a normal person, so no.” The abrupt switch in tone caught everyone off guard. Rachel and Gar looked at each other.  _ Wow _ she mouthed. The boy just shook his head, wide-eyed; last to figure out how intertwined Dick's lives were.

“Lunch is prepared, if everyone is hungry.”

“Soup!” Jason cheered, bounding into the dining room where plates of small sandwiches we're already set out.

“Thanks Alfred.” The man returned Dick's smile.

“So how long did you live here?” Kori asked Dick as they got situated at the table, her across from him and Gar to her right across from Rachel.

“Four years.”

“That doesn't seem very long.”

“I moved out when I turned 18.”

“That's really young!” Gar exclaimed.

“I stayed in Gotham,” the man shrugged.

“If you were just gonna stay here anyway why'd you bother moving out?” Jason laughed. He sat at Kori's other side.

“I was 18,” Dick stated, as if it was obvious.

“And?”

“Guardianship expires when the ward becomes a legal adult.”

“What was Bruce gonna fucking do, kick you out?” Dick chewed his soup to avoid answering for a moment. 

“He had long enough to prove he wouldn't, but that didn't happen.” As soon as the words left his mouth he hoped in vain that Alfred hadn't heard them.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jason asked, half laughing, uncomfortable.

“It doesn't matter,” Dick replied dismissively.

“Yeah, if it's part of your problem with the guy, it does.”

“Then you aren't the person I should be talking to, are you?” Jason picked up another spoonful of soup, glaring into the bowl.

“It’s not like you talk to him at all anyway.” Dick was about to yell at him when Rachel struck the heel of her boot backwards into his shin. He took a deep breath, suddenly conscious of how awkward things had gotten for the other three.

“So where's Alfred?” Kori asked.

“He doesn't eat with us. It's a weird formality thing.”

“We usually eat together when Bruce is gone, though,” Jason stated.

“Yeah,” Dick agreed.

“Does he leave a lot?” Rachel asked. Jason shrugged.

“Business trips aren't really… regular? He always gets back asap. This week he can't help though.”

“Why didn't he bring you?” Dick asked.

“So I could look after the city while he's gone.” Dick nodded. Alfred had clearly debriefed the boy on the fact that they weren't hiding anything from their guests for once. “Did he bring you on trips?”

“Sometimes, if they didn't interfere with school too much.”

“What'd you do?”

“Get stuck with the kids of the people he was meeting with, mostly,” he chuckled.

“Mostly?” Dick grinned mischievously. It was the only vaguely positive expression Jason had seen on him.

“I had a habit of…  _ getting lost _ … occasionally.”

“What does that entail?” Kori asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Riding to a part of town where normal people lived and just... being there instead.”

“Not very social are you?” Jason noted.

“Not when I don't want to be,” he replied coolly.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't need people to like me.”

“Oh? And here I thought you were such a people pleaser,” Kori teased. She was rewarded with a soft chuckle. The woman, seeing that Gar and Rachel had finished their soups, split her bowl between them.

“Do you not like it?” Jason frowned.

“I don't really… eat.”

“Have just a little bit,” the boy insisted, clearly worried.

“She doesn't need to,” Dick said quietly.

“I'm like, an alien, or something,” the woman shrugged. “Haven't really figured the whole thing out yet but it's the only explanation we can think of.”

“...oh. Is that…What the cult thing was about?”

“When I yelled at your father? No.”

“My dad's Demonic,” Rachel stated.

“Oh?”

“I got sick once so now I can shape shift,” Gar offered, since the other two had explained themselves and Rachel probably didn't want to be the focus of the conversation. Jason proceeded to nod and fail to hide his surprise.

“Are you hiding anything?” he asked, looking up at Dick.

“Robin was what my mom called me and the suit is a muted tribute to our family's colors,” Dick stated monotonously, “May as well get that one out of the way too.”

Jason stared blankly ahead and put his head in his hands.

“Shit… didn't think you'd actually say anything.”

“He really didn't tell you any of that?”

“No….” Dick heard the floor creak and saw Alfred in the doorway, lips set in a grim line. “No wonder you asked why I wasn't a Jay or something,” he half chuckled.

“It isn't your fault for not knowing,” Rachel told him, voicing what Dick wouldn't. The boy looked up at him, and he gave a curt nod. With the moment concluded, Alfred spoke up.

“The cookies should be cool enough to eat,” he announced, successfully changing to mood of the room.

“Fuck yeah,” Jason replied, getting up from the table with his empty bowl.

“Language, Master Jason.” The boy ducked past him, shoulders hunched.

“Sorry.” Dick chuckled and shook his head. Between the two of them the table was quickly cleared.

“Al makes the  _ best _ cookies,” Jason whispered as he passed a glass of milk to Rachel. She grinned. For a moment their fingers brushed as she grabbed the glass from him, and she saw him, sitting on the counter while Alfred cooked, gaunt and pale swimming in a pair of sweats that couldn't possibly fit the boy she saw in front of her. Milk sloshed out of the glass as he abruptly pulled away.

“S-sorry, I didn't mean-” she grimaced, “-I can't control when it happens.”

“She's an empath,” Gar stated as he tossed a cloth napkin over the spill.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated.

“It's… fine,” Jason stated, putting the glass down in front of her.

“You kids alright in here?” Dick asked when he walked in with the plate of cookies and saw the tension around the table.

“Yeah,” Gar answered, and as if willing it into existence added, “we're good.” Dick looked at Rachel, only dropping the subject when she nodded in affirmation at the boy's statement.

“So what'd you come back to Gotham for anyway?” Jason asked. Dick thought for a moment, half wondering where Kori had wandered off to and half wondering about his answer.

“Well it's hard to say no to Alfred,” he chuckled. 

“So you just blocked my number or something?” The look of confusion that flashed over the man's face was enough. “I texted you to ask if you'd wanna hang out behind B's back or something next time he was out like, weeks ago.” Dick frowned, checking his phone. There was no conversation with Jason or any unrecognized number.

“When, weeks ago?” Jason shrugged.

“Whenever you called to be let into a safehouse.”

“Huh…” his frown deepened when he found the conversation in the trash, unread. “Looks like I deleted it?”

“Wow. Thanks bro. Didn't even bother to remember it huh.” Dick grimaced.

“Well, to be fair that was after the whole asylum thing,” Gar noted, “he was pretty fucked up.”

“I was fine.”

“You passed out in the back of the car the moment you sat down,” Rachel told him. “You asked Kori how she knew about the safehouse once we finally got you up because you forgot you put it in the GPS.” Dick opened and closed his mouth, dumbfounded.

“Hm,” he settled on. Gar laughed at how Dick didn't remember that; he didn't know how else to respond.

“The fuck happened?” Jason exclaimed, unaware that Alfred's worried ear was listening.

“Gar and I snuck off alone to where they were keeping my mom and…” Dick spoke up.

“We're fine now. Kori blew the place. They're gone.” 

“They drugged him like crazy,” Gar added, getting to the point.

“It's not like I couldn't function.”

“It took awhile to get you responsive…” Rachel put her half eaten cookie down, a blank look on her face. Gar stopped talking.

“Well we kind of have to function regardless of what we're on, around here” Jason laughed.

“Exactly. There was no reason to worry about me. Anyway there was a lot going on.” Jason nodded, unhappily accepting that that was probably the closest thing to an apology he would get from the man. 

Dick's phone buzzed, and he answered it.

“Kori?”

“Where's the fucking bathroom in this place?” He blinked in surprise.

“Well… depends on… where you are…”

“Well I don't know where I am anymore,” she exclaimed in the fed up tone of voice he had become familiar with.

“Can you describe it?”

“Badly lit.”

“Its an old building babe, that's every room.” Jason raised his eyebrows and the other two snickered. Dick glared daggers at all of them when it occurred to him what he had said.

“Well I walked through, like, a ballroom or something,” she said, clearly grinning.

“Okay, I'll come find you.”

“Thanks  _ sweetheart _ ,” she teased before hanging up. Dick put down the phone with a sigh, reddening face betraying him.

“I'm going to go find Kori.”

“Have fun,” Jason replied.

“Please don't,” Rachel muttered, putting her face in her hands. Dick left abruptly, shaking his head. 

“So did you actually find your mom, or…?” 

“Yeah, she just, didn't feel safe about leaving the apartment.” Jason nodded, munching on another cookie.

“So how'd you uh, get into all of this?” Gar asked eventually, making a small vague gesture with his hands.

“Got caught jacking the Bat's wheels. He dropped me off at a boys home at first but it was just a bunch of adults forcing kids to steal shit. After I helped him bust it he took me in himself.”

“Wow.”

“Is that why you became Robin?”

“Sorta,” he shrugged, “I mean, I grew up half on the streets even before my mom died. Old man's been in prison since I was a kid. Nothing could teach me better that the cops are bullshit and criminals run the place,” he said, and Rachel was unnerved by the undercurrent of anger, rage. How it felt so similar to Dick's. “I finally get to do something about it. It's what any kid like me dreams of. Being Robin, working with Batman to put the fucking scum terrorizing our parents and shit away for good. So much extortion was stopped when Dick was around. Bat's got A list lunatic shit to save the city from. Robin kept kids like me safe. I don't care what Dick or Al think about Robin. He helps people. And I need to be out there to do it.”

Out in the hallway Kori put her hand on Dick's shoulder.

“Are you done eavesdropping?” She whispered. He nodded, and lead her silently passed the closed door. She couldn't read his face.

“Is that what you two fought about in Chicago?” Rachel asked. Jason huffed a quiet, damning laugh.

“I guess, yeah.” He thought to himself a moment, unable to keep from wondering why Bruce never told him where Robin had come from. He wondered if somehow the man didn't know. He wondered if it was guilt.


	2. The Yearbook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel finds hidden memories Dick left behind him.

When they were done eating Alfred showed Rachel and Gar to their rooms. Rachel thanked him before she was left alone. Her travel bag sat on the dresser already, and there was a sheet over the vanity mirror. She walked over to the fireplace and put her hands out to warm them. It had been lit too recently for the room to have warmed yet, with the height of the ceilings. She left the room. One of the doors was open, and she could hear that the boys had already started up some sort of video game. Rachel wanted to poke around more, though. Dick and Kori were somewhere else in the house with Alfred, so she wandered the wing freely. One door on the other side of the hall from hers caught her curiosity. She opened it hesitantly. 

The bedroom was dominated by blues. It smelled freshly cleaned, just as hers did, and it seemed just as impersonal at first glance.

“ **It's his room** ,” her reflection hissed from above the dresser. 

“It doesn't feel like him,” she muttered.

“ **You aren't looking hard enough** .”

“Shut up,” she sighed. There were no pictures, nothing that drew her in as a memento, the closet was just full of old clothes, cozy but not sloppy, the only thing she recognized as relating to him at all. “I don't see why he would have left anything personal here if he didn't intend to come back,” she reasoned.

“ **I see plenty of things to want to leave behind** ,” the reflection chuckled. When she glanced at it it pointed to the bookcase.

“Why are you doing this?” The reflection shrugged.

“ **I only know what you do and what you don't realize you can perceive.** ” Rachel rolled her eyes.

“Call me again when that makes more sense.”

For the past few days Rachel had been spending controlled amounts of time in front of one of the safehouse's mirrors, figuring out her powers. Gar had been the one to suggest it, once she opened up about what exactly happened to her reflection to the team. Dick had given her a notebook to write in, in case she got any information. 

It wasn't her father any more than any child was their father. Her mother had been relieved. It was a part of her that was closer to him, yes, but not Trigon himself. It was where her powers came from, where she needed to learn to tap into in moderation to keep from exploding. It didn't like being controlled, but Rachel was learning to stop letting it scare her.

**_If you aren't afraid then why do you cover all the mirrors?_ ** It liked to taunt. She had started to ignore it.

She walked up to the bookcase. There were spaces that seemed to have housed photos between the books, but they were empty now. She read the spines. Textbooks for math, chemistry, bio, history… classics she recognized as things upperclassmen at her school had to read, things Dick had left behind from high school. She dragged her fingertip across them idley only to stop abruptly at a wave of… something… that hit her from a tall black book whose spine was blank, the first of four.

“ **Ding ding ding** ,” the layered voice sang with a sick satisfaction. Rachel pulled down the yearbook, an ill feeling beginning to curl up from her stomach.

She opened it. The spine cracked. It had only spent one day in it's life open. Forever ago. She knew why. She couldn't tear her eyes away from why.

_ “So they homeschooled you?” _ Dick had asked.

_ “Kinda dumb to go into school as a senior, so. Yeah. I caught up fine.” _

_ “Good for you.” _

Now she knew, understood the strange undertone in his voice when he had said that.

She could only make out a handful of real yearbook signatures, phone numbers, well wishes, someone in bright green almost yellow ink humorously telling Dick not to break any more bones over the summer or else they’d encase him in bubblewrap, normal high school yearbook things. Making these messages nearly illegible were words that made her guts twist.

“ **The Spy is coming** ,” her reflection hissed. Startled, she dropped the book and turned around, about to ask it who it meant. The door opened. Alfred raised his eyebrows at her when he walked into the room.

“Master Grayson would not appreciate finding you snooping about his belongings, Miss Roth.”

“Sorry,” she sputtered quickly, backing away from the shelf. She stood there anxiously as the man started the fireplace. When he straightened up he spied the yearbook open to the page Rachel had been looking at on the floor. She picked it up quickly.

“May I see that?” he asked, approaching her with concern. She reluctantly handed it to him, unsure of what else to do. 

“ **_Dick won’t like that_ ** ,” the mirror hissed. She watched Alfred’s face as he read the insults and slurs strewn across the pages, the brown triangle blocking out what Dick’s friends had written; only an empath could know what he felt behind that practiced mask. He looked up at her.

“The boys seem to be playing video games, if you are interested in joining them.” Rachel nodded silently and all but ran from the room.

Jason’s was obvious. Books overflowed from shelves into neat stacks on the nightstands and and dresser and desk, a few weapons hung from a wall, organised chaos. 

“Sup.” The boy craned his neck backwards over the chair until he saw her upside down. She let out a breathy chuckle.

“How did you dodge that!” Gar exclaimed meanwhile, “You weren’t even looking!”

“How did you fail to hit a man not paying attention?” Jason teased. The other boy fumed. Rachel watched the race from behind them. 

“Oh, couldn’t dodge a green shell huh?” Gar mocked.

“Shut up.” The silence lasted only a moment.

“HA!” Jason barked as Gar got hit with a blue shell from an NPC.

“OH COME ON!” he yelled as Jason passed him, getting first. “Screw you!”

“It’s not my fault you’re bad at Mario Kart.” His statement was rewarded with a punch in the arm.

“You two gonna play monopoly next?” Rachel asked, eyebrows raised.

“Fuck no,” Gar answered. Jason cackled.

“You want in?” he asked, holding up a controller for Rachel.

“Sure,” she shrugged. “Didn’t really grow up with this though.”

“Neither did I,” Jason laughed. They helped her figure out the buttons, which ended in her and Gar teaming up against the older boy.

“I teach you the game and yet you forsake me,” he sighed dramatically after she hit him with a blue shell, putting him in fourth and Gar in first.

“Who’s to say I won’t turn on  _ both _ of you?” she chuckled.

“ **Who’s to say indeed** .” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO so y'all really like this shit so imma promo another fic I've been writing called "Finding Family" thats sort of my own rehash of Dick's backstory but started with how I thought Teen Titans would happen in the cinematic verse since we haven't seen shit of him in that respect, so there's his backstory for it im writing rn and then later there will be teen titans things unrelated to this. 
> 
> Summary as follows:  
> After escaping Gotham's child protective services, Dick Grayson is determined to prove the murder of his parents. Taken in by a girl who calls herself Rhonda, he learns how to survive the city his father never felt safe in, and how to navigate its injustices.
> 
> So please check it out! If you've liked this series you might like my other one too. thanks for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> This one's gonna be long so I'm breaking it up into two chapters to get it out here to y'all sooner. Oneshot is. Loose. Lol  
> Please let me know what you think!  
> And thank you for all the comments so far! I have a tumblr for my writing and art, if you want to find me I'm at smallest-letters.tumblr.com


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